azure-cost
microsoft/azure-skills
Query Azure costs, forecast spending, and optimize to reduce waste.
What is azure-cost?
Azure cost management skill enables querying historical costs, projecting future spending, and identifying optimization opportunities across subscriptions, resource groups, and management groups. Use it when analyzing Azure bills, investigating cost spikes, or finding resources to rightsize or remove.
- Query historical costs across subscriptions, resource groups, management groups, or billing accounts
- Forecast future Azure spending based on current usage trends
- Identify cost optimization opportunities and waste reduction strategies
- Analyze service-specific costs (Redis, Storage, AKS, VMs)
- Detect orphaned resources and rightsizing candidates
How to install azure-cost
npx skills add https://github.com/microsoft/azure-skills --skill azure-cost- Azure subscription with Cost Management Reader, Monitoring Reader, and Reader roles assigned
- Access to the target scope (subscription, resource group, management group, or billing account)
How to use azure-cost
- 1.Install the skill using the provided npm command
- 2.Identify the Azure scope (subscription ID, resource group name, or management group ID) you want to analyze
- 3.Choose a workflow: Cost Query for current costs, Cost Forecast for projections, or Cost Optimization for waste reduction
- 4.Provide relevant filters (time period, service type, resource group) to narrow results
- 5.Review the cost breakdown or optimization recommendations returned
Use cases
- Analyze a monthly Azure bill and break down costs by service or resource group
- Forecast next quarter's spending to plan budget allocation
- Find and eliminate orphaned or underutilized resources to reduce waste
- Investigate unexpected cost spikes and identify root causes
- Optimize storage or VM sizing to lower monthly expenses
- Cloud cost analysts
- DevOps engineers managing Azure infrastructure
- Finance teams reviewing cloud spending
- Platform engineers optimizing resource utilization
azure-cost FAQ
You need Cost Management Reader, Monitoring Reader, and Reader roles assigned on the target scope (subscription, resource group, management group, or billing account).
Yes, you can query at the management group or billing account scope to analyze costs across multiple subscriptions.
The skill supports querying historical costs and forecasting future spending; specific date range options are available through the Cost Query and Cost Forecast workflows.
No, this skill is for cost analysis and optimization only. Do not use it for deploying resources, provisioning, diagnostics, or security audits.
Yes, the skill includes optimization guidance for Azure Cache for Redis and Azure Storage, with extensibility for other services.
Full instructions (SKILL.md)
Source of truth, from microsoft/azure-skills.
name: azure-cost description: "Azure cost management: query costs, forecast spending, optimize to reduce waste. WHEN: "Azure costs", "Azure bill", "cost breakdown", "how much am I spending", "forecast spending", "optimize costs", "reduce spending", "orphaned resources", "rightsize VMs", "cost spike", "reduce storage costs", "AKS cost". DO NOT USE FOR: deploying resources, provisioning, diagnostics, or security audits." license: MIT metadata: author: Microsoft version: "1.2.2"
Azure Cost Management Skill
Query historical costs, forecast future spending, optimize to reduce waste.
Routing
| User Intent | Workflow |
|---|---|
| Understand current costs | Cost Query |
| Reduce costs / find waste | Cost Optimization |
| Project future costs | Cost Forecast |
Quick Reference
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Query API | POST {scope}/providers/Microsoft.CostManagement/query?api-version=2023-11-01 |
| Forecast API | POST {scope}/providers/Microsoft.CostManagement/forecast?api-version=2023-11-01 |
| Required Role | Cost Management Reader + Monitoring Reader + Reader (on target scope) |
Scope Patterns
- Subscription:
/subscriptions/<id> - Resource Group:
/subscriptions/<id>/resourceGroups/<name> - Management Group:
/providers/Microsoft.Management/managementGroups/<id> - Billing Account:
/providers/Microsoft.Billing/billingAccounts/<id>
Service-Specific Optimization
References
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